HWHAP Ep408 Artemis II Recovery
JSC · 2026-01-23
Ep408_Artemis Recovery Director Nilufar Ramji Houston We Have a Podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of NASA's Johnson Space Center Episode 408: Artemis II: Recovery. I'm Nilufar Ramji, and I'll be your host today on this podcast, we bring in the experts, scientists, engineers and astronauts all to let you know what's going on in the world of human spaceflight and more. We're headed to the moon and beyond, and the Artemis two test flight will be NASA's first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years. NASA astronauts Reid Weisman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will take this flight aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft, testing its systems and ensuring it's ready for future deep space missions. Throughout the Artemis campaign, NASA is sending astronauts to explore the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits and to build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars for the benefit of all. The Artemis II mission has many moving parts, and we've covered some of them on this podcast already. So today we are going to focus on recovery. On the final day of the mission, the Orion spacecraft will bring the four crew members through Earth's atmosphere for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Then a team of experts will ensure the crew is recovered from their landing site and are able to exit Orion safely. Joining me today is the Artemis two landing and recovery director, Lili Villarreal from the exploration Ground Systems team at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. She has worked with a large team at NASA and our partners to ensure the recovery of both spacecraft and crew is meticulously planned and tested. With this episode, we had some difficulty with the recording, and you may notice some changes in the sound quality at certain points in this episode. Are you ready? Let's dive in. Nilufar Ramji Lili, thank you so much for joining me on Houston We Have a Podcast. Lili Villarreal Well, thank you for having me. I'm very honored to support this podcast. Nilufar Ramji Well, we want to get right in to learn a little bit more about Artemis two recovery. So let's start off with a little bit about yourself. Tell me a little bit about your NASA career and how you ended up as the Artemis II recovery director. Lili Villarreal Well, I'll start out with saying that just like everybody else that works at NASA, you know, most of us wanted to be an astronaut, and I started out at Georgia Tech, getting my bachelor's and master's in aerospace engineering. And after I graduated, I went to work for Boeing in Seattle, working on the environmental control system designed for the 747 and the triple-sevens. And I really loved it, but I knew that Boeing had a contract with NASA in Florida, working on the assembly of the International Space Station, and so that was something that I really, really wanted to be a part of it. Gave me the opportunity to work for NASA, and I just kept applying for any job that was open in that contract. I think I bugged him so much. Eventually, about a year later, one of the managers got a hold of me and asked me if I wanted to come and do an interview. And of course, I was like, Yes, and he hired me that same day, and that's how my career at NASA really started. That was back in 2000 and I was very lucky to have been a part of working International Space Station for it's pretty much since the beginning, for 15 years with Boeing at first as a mechanical lifting and hailing engineer, and then I transferred over to NASA in the Operations Engineering area. Now also became a deputy Mission Manager in the Space Station days. After the space shuttle ended, I was I transferred myself over to the Artemis program because, oh my god, we were going to the moon, and I want to be part of that. And I've been working on the Artemis program for quite some time in different operational management kind of jobs and and I just ended up, in the last few years, lucky enough to have been asked to come and do the recovery operations recovery director job. So very lucky, and I have loved every minute of it. Nilufar Ramji So it's safe to say that for as long as we have had a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit, you've been at NASA, or you've been working alongside NASA. Lili Villarreal Yes, 100% that is a fact. Yes. Nilufar Ramji That's really exciting. And congratulations on being selected for the role of recovery director. Let's talk a little bit about the mission itself. How, how does everything play out from where you sit? Lili Villarreal Well, you know, we actually are responsible for recovery. We call it recovery, rescue and retrieval. So recovery is considered the part of the recovery that the- recovering, the crew and the capsule in a nominal splashdown event. Rescue is all about rescuing the crew if they land in an off nominal location or they there is an actual abort during the launch. And retrieval is all about getting that capsule post a crew rescue, and obvio